On the go and no time to finish that story right now? Your News is the place for you to save content to read later from any device. Register with us and content you save will appear here so you can access them to read later.

The man convicted of the manslaughter of Michael Jackson has blamed paramedics for the pop star's death, describing them as "buffoons" for their mishandling of the singer in the crucial minutes after his overdose.

Conrad Murray claims Jackson was still alive when he was pronounced dead on arrival at UCLA hospital, despite ER doctors claiming he was "clinically dead" at the time.

"I thought, 'Can this guy get some sleep? Because I know his future relies on it.' Michael would cry and complain and beg and remind me of what he had at stake," Murray said.

"He was penniless, he was burnt, extremely sad. My losses have been colossal but that doesn't stop me from loving him, but it doesn't also stop me telling the story of him that is honest."

Jackson died shortly after midday on June 25, 2009, of acute Propofol toxicity, a powerful anaesthetic that Murray had been giving Jackson in the months prior to his death. Two other barbiturates, also administered by Murray, were also in his system.

Found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after injecting the singer with the overdose, Murray spent nearly two years in jail.

Despite cardiologists and anaesthesiologists testifying that Murray had committed numerous egregious acts of negligence while caring for Jackson - including lacking the proper heart and respiratory monitoring equipment, failing to keep records of the drugs he administered and, most inexplicably, waiting more than 20 minutes to call for an ambulance after Jackson had stopped breathing - Murray has consistently claimed his innocence, and claims a bigger conspiracy is at play here.

"[At the time of Jackson's overdose, I] was in a room with a bunch of paramedics who were so sluggish they were buffoons. they were buffoons," he said.

"They basically did nothing for Michael, as soon as they arrived, for 25 minutes they made mistakes, and because of the mistakes they made ... well ...

"I met Michael lifeless, he had no pulse, no blood pressure."

Yet despite the emergency room doctor pronouncing Jackson dead on arrival at UCLA hospital, according to Murray, "he was not dead. He was alive".

Murray's book, This Is It!: The Secret lives of Dr. Conrad Murray and Michael Jackson includes details about why Murray was sceptical at the moment Jackson approached him to become the pop star's exclusive personal physician on his comeback tour.

It was 2009, and while Murray had met Jackson three years earlier after treating one of his children in Las Vegas in 2006, things didn't quite sit right. He couldn't help but wonder if there was an ulterior motive.

"When I chose to accept the personal physician role for the This Is It concert, it was very tough, it was a very huge decision for me to make, but he [Michael] kept urging me, egging me on," Murray told news.com.au.

Seven years since his death, Murray believes he knows why he was wise to be so sceptical.

"I did not kill Michael Jackson. He was a drug addict," Murray said after his release from prison in October 2013. "Michael Jackson accidentally killed Michael Jackson.

"I am a very good doctor, highly respected, practised more than 20 years in the most litigious place in the country where I never had a public reprimand, never had a medical malpractice lawsuit, anything. Completely clean. Impeccable.

"And there it is. You're dealing with a person who has to give you their history, and he hid things from me, which in retrospect would have changed my entire relationship with Michael. He hid his entire drug abuse history."

The way Murray explains it is almost conspiratorial, as if there was a secret plan to undermine his medical profession, despite the judge who found him guilty citing Jackson died "because of a totality of circumstances which are directly attributable to Dr Murray".

"It isn't the Propofol that was his problem, it was what he was hiding for me, by hiding his opioid abuse," Murray said.

He described his "ordeal" since his initial meeting with Jackson as "horrific". Particularly, he says, the trial.

"I must say all of that helped me because I am one man, I have faced this entire world alone. I had to stand up to the allegations that came from everywhere and every language, as the scapegoat.

"I faced the whole world alone, but I'm here to tell Michael's story, and my story, that Michael wanted the world to know."